Re: I've thought better of Linux

"Brandon J. Van Every" <mylastnameruntogether@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> rsheridan6@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > Wacom Graphire support is an odd reason to choose a language for a
> > writing 3d games. I'm sure that'll be the least of your problems,
> > regardless of your choice of OS or language.
> > You can be a tech pioneer or you can use proven technologies that
> > work
> > out of the box. You can't do both.
>
> It's a question of platform support, and right now money. I only
> mentioned the Wacom tablet as the worst problem. There are several
> others that have sucked a lot of time out of me. Really the decision
> is between Linux, Cygwin, MinGW, or straight up Windows as the
> programming environment. I was surprised to find out how much work
> Linux asked me to do. It's really not any less work than fighting
> MinGW, so why bother?
>
> I consider the platform important. When a platform wastes 1.5 weeks
> of my time on nothing, it's important. That's 1.5 weeks I could have
> been writing an OpenGL binding from scratch, if I had had a mind to do
> so. Instead it's compiling kernels for mouse drivers, a totally
> uninteresting problem.

So, you were able to solve this totally uninteresting problem?

One thing I don't understand was all your stuff about having to
rebuild the kernel to get the support you needed - this seems very odd
to me and something I've not needed to do in years. Does the kernel
come with a driver for your mouse tablet thingy? If so, then surely
there was already a module which you simply needed to load? If it
doesn't come with support, then what was the point of rebuilding the
kernel.

Putting all that aside, and even factoring in your terrible state of
poverty, surely, since your real stated aim was to evaluate Linux as a
development platform, the sensible and very simple solution would have
been to just go and buy a cheap mouse - I mean, god, that would have
cost less than $10 and saved you loads of time - then if you decided
Linux was worth putting more effort into, you could have looked into
getting your flash mouse tablet working.



> So now, the issue is whether lack of UFFI support is a dealbreaker or
> not. Neither GNU CLISP, GNU Common Lisp, or Corman Lisp has it. I
> suppose I'll have to compare UFFI to whatever GNU Common Lisp does
> have.
>

This still seems like a weird way to go to me. Have you actually
written some lisp yet? Surely it would make more sense to prototype
one of your games or some simple game in Lisp first and decide if you
find it a good language for solving your problems and then see if you
can find an implementation with the right foreign function interface
once you know its a good development platform?

I don't know, but it just seems to me that every way you turn there is
some out of your control obstacle in your way which is preventing you
from earning all those riches you plan to get in 10 years time -
there must be a point at which you begin to re-examine your approach
and possibly realise its not GPL, Linux, UFFI, editors, GL libraries
or anything else thats getting in the way, but instead could possibly
be you yourself?

You may have heard of two common personality types - one type has a
fear of failure and consequently never actually starts anything
because if you don't start, you can't fail. The other has a fear of
success, they start things, but never finish them. I'm beginning to
suspect you fall into one of these groups - guess which one.

Tim

--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
.

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